


i’ll take the night shift.

by punkrockdog



Category: My Own Private Idaho (1991)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Pining, Temporarily Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:01:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26681083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockdog/pseuds/punkrockdog
Summary: Scott isn’t his boyfriend. He sighs, lights a cigarette. The thought has never hurt more.(tw for drug use, implied child abuse, and implied sexual assault)
Relationships: Scott Favor/Mike Waters
Comments: 7
Kudos: 64





	i’ll take the night shift.

Mike is _hungry._

He’s sitting with his back pressed up against the faded brick of an old building, because everything in Portland is faded and all of the buildings are old, and his stomach is eating itself from the inside out. He closes his eyes and tries to remind himself that if he falls asleep, he’ll still be hungry when he wakes up. (But he might not have his shoes or his coat.)

“Hey,” someone says from above him. He ignores it, mostly because he’s too tired to care right now. 

“Hey,” the voice says again. He looks up. 

He’s startled, but not wholly surprised, to see a yuppy looking rich kid, probably around his age, with shined shoes and shaggy hair. His eyes are wide and curious, eyeing Mike up and down like he’s looking at an animal in an enclosure. Mike clears his throat. 

“Yeah?” Mike’s tone is bored, detached. His stomach feels like it’s ripping open. 

This kid will pay well; he’s probably trying to prove something to his dad, and Mike wouldn’t mind spending the night hanging around a fancy socialite party and being gawked at. He might even get a meal out of it. 

“You know where I can score some blow?” the kid says, too hushed, eyes darting all around like a cop might pop out of the dumpster next to them. 

Mike frowns. He was really hoping to get taken to dinner. He says, “You already try under the bridge?” If this kid is a narc, he’s a really bad one. 

“No,” he says, sheepish. Mike shrugs. 

“Well, there you go.”

The kid nods, looking at Mike for a considering moment. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Mike,” he says, because at this point he has nothing to lose. The kid extends his hand for Mike to shake. 

“I’m Scott. Scott Favor,” he says with a wicked grin like he’s just told a joke and is waiting for Mike to laugh. Mike takes his hand and uses it to pull himself up. 

“Favor. Oh. Oh, hey. Isn’t your dad - “

“Yeah, yeah. That's him,” Scott says. 

“Neat.”

Scott nods. Mike expects that to be the end of it, so he’s a little shocked when Scott says “Hey, you hungry?”

“Oh, dude. You have no _idea.”_

+

Scott likes to read boring old books that smell like mothballs and have soft yellowing pages. It reminds Mike that everything in this godforsaken city is about fifty years past its shelf life, but it’s not like Idaho is any better. 

Scott also likes to read Shakespeare out loud to Mike sometimes, and Mike laughs when he does voices and especially when he acts out the scenes. 

Scott likes to make Mike laugh, and Mike likes Scott.

They get on like a house on fire. Scott has a thousand crazy ideas and a monologue to match each one, and Mike is willing to go along with all of them. He thinks it’ll be them against the world, their laughter stretching all the way to the end of time, which to Mike looks like a road, and he’s pretty sure Scott would follow him for the whole length of it. 

Scott doesn’t run in the exact same circles as Mike, but a hustler is a hustler is a hustler. He doesn’t sleep with men, yet, and he gives Mike weird looks when he comes back from dates smelling like cologne. All of Scott’s clients smell like dried flowers and they leave lipstick stains on his cheek. Mike thinks that pearls look like teeth, and why would you want to wear those around your neck? Scott punches his arm and tells him he has no class. Well, yeah. No shit. 

“Don’t you think it’s a little degrading?” Scott asks one day, as if he doesn’t sell his ass to old ladies just like Mike does to married men. They’re sitting in a park under a tree, and the sun keeps shining in Mike’s eyes. 

“I don’t mind it,” he says with a self conscious little shrug. Scott is inching dangerously close to a question Mike isn’t even sure how to answer. “The cash is good.”

“Yeah,” Scott says, looking at Mike with an inscrutable expression. “Yeah, I guess.”

+

Mike takes the joint from Scott. Their fingers brush, and Mike’s mind is pleasantly blank. He tries not to think about what it feels like when they touch. He tries not to touch Scott at all, but for some reason, it’s just too fucking hard. The weed is making him feel loose and happy and _good,_ which is a feeling he is not so often blessed with. 

“Mikey,” Scott sighs. He’s looking up at the sky. The concrete of the roof is cold, and it’s seeping through their jeans. They had to climb up old rusty firescapes to get this view, and Mike almost fell right before he got to the top. Scott saved him just in time. 

“Scotty,” Mike says, just to say something. Scott looks over at him and grins. 

“Where are you from, Mikey?”

Mike shuts his eyes and tries to take a deep breath. His hands are shaking and he can feel his eyelids fluttering. There’s a dark shadow edging in from the corner of his mind, trying to pull him down into deep black nothingness. 

The word tastes like tumbleweeds in his mouth, and for a second he can feel hot, empty asphalt underneath his hands. 

“Idaho,” Mike says meekly. Scott hums. 

“Tell me about Idaho, would ya?”

When Mike wakes up, he is alone on the roof and the wind is howling. Scott’s ratty old suit jacket is draped over him like a blanket. He lets his head fall back on the concrete and goes back to sleep. He goes all the way back to Idaho, which is better in his dreams but not by much. 

+

One day Scott meets a man named Bob Pigeon. He is fat and unkempt and the way he looks at Scott makes Mike feel sick. Scott is fascinated by him and his stories and the things he has to say, which isn’t a lot once you sift through the meaningless metaphors and curse words. 

“The dude is creepy,” Mike says, trying not to grind his teeth. He is annoyed and jealous but on top of it all, no one has picked him up in almost a week and he’s run out of coke. 

“Don’t be a neighsayer, Mike. The man is a genius,” Scott says, slinging an arm around Mike’s shoulders. Mike twists out of his grip and loses his footing for a second before turning around and giving Scott a skeptical look. 

“He’s a bum,” he says. 

“You’re a whore,” Scott says back, almost sing-song.

“Hey!”

“And I’m a disappointment! We all have our vices, Mikey.” The arm goes back around the shoulder.

“I think you’re using that word wrong.” He thinks for a second. “I’m a better whore than you are.”

Scott throws his head back and laughs and laughs and laughs. 

“That you are, Mike. That you are.”

+

“Bob says he has a place for us to stay,” Scott tells him. 

“Bob says a lot of things,” he grumbles. Scott flicks him on the forehead. 

“A hotel, Mikey. Our own _room.”_

“Are we sharing?”

Scott cocks his head to the side. “Why wouldn’t we?”

Mike thinks, _because we barely know each other._ He thinks, _because seven months ago I thought you were some brat trying to make a scene. Because I don’t know what to do about you and it’s driving me crazy._

But instead he just nods and leans forward to punch Scott’s shoulder. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t we.”

Scott grins at him, and Mike looks away, like he is the sun and he hurts to look at. It does hurt to look at him. Mike has _no_ _fucking_ _idea_ what to do about it. 

“And when I inherit my money,” Scott says in a low, smooth voice. “We’ll have our own place. I’ll buy you the biggest house in Portland.”

Mike laughs. “Bullshit. You’ll probably run off to Europe or something.”

Scott looks affronted. “How dare you, Mike! You don’t believe that I would take care of you?”

His tone is light and something in Mike’s chest aches. He looks at Scott’s hands, his long slender fingers. He thinks _I hope you take care of me for the rest of my life. I don’t plan on leaving you._

“Take me to Europe, then.”

“All in due time, baby.”

+

They sleep in the same bed. Scott gives Mike his old shirts. 

For the first time in his life, Mike knows what it is to want something you could have but are too afraid to ask for. 

Or perhaps this, too, is not his for the taking. _Nothing ever is,_ he thinks solemnly. 

+

Mike falls asleep and wakes up in Bob Pigeon’s bed. He can hear shouting, but it sounds far away and blurred, like someone has dragged an eraser over everything. If he strains hard enough, he can maybe hear Scott, and he sounds angry. 

Mike does not know why he is in Bob’s bed. Mike does not remember falling asleep here, and he doesn’t really remember falling asleep in general. He thinks, maybe, he was outside before. His eyes burn, so he shuts them. The shouting sounds closer now, or he’s just hearing it better. 

Somebody opens the door. Or rather, someone bursts through the door and then stops once they see Mike on the bed. He looks over. Oh. Of course. 

“Mikey,” Scott says on an exhale. His face is red, slowly draining but still flushed. “You’re awake.”

“Why - ?” Mike begins to say, but Scott shushes him. He walks over and scoops Mike up bridal style, like it’s nothing. 

“You need to change,” Scott says. “You stink.”

“Fuck you,” Mike says gently. Scott’s chest is warm where it’s pressed to Mike’s side, and he smells like smoke and sugar and sweat. He shifts Mike so his head is cradled against Scott’s shoulder. Mike closes his eyes again and goes back to sleep. 

+

“You look tired,” one of the new boys, Digger, says. 

“I’m always tired,” Mike responds. Digger nods thoughtfully like he said something worth thinking about. 

“They pay for sleep studies, you know. Like, they put you in a room and hook you up to wires and stuff.”

“That sounds awful,” Gary says from across the room. Mike smiles, then shakes his head. He stands up from where they’re sitting on the floor around a small fire someone’s built. 

“Hey, if Scott asks, tell him I went out for smokes, alright?”

“Yeah, sure,” Digger says, already turning away. 

Mike ends up at an old bookstore staring at a display of torn up paperbacks. He counts how many books he’s heard of, and then how many Scott has read. The numbers almost match up. He has ten dollars in his pockets. He buys Scott a book about vampires and hopes he likes it. Scott kind of looks like a vampire, sometimes, all sharp angles and dark hair and fancy clothes. He talks like one, too. 

Mike thinks about Scott and vampires and biting the whole way home, and even after he gets into bed. It’s only five but he’s tired and Scott is still out fucking people for money and he just wants to close his eyes. 

When he opens them again Scott is sitting at the foot of the bed ( _their_ bed) and flipping through the book. He’s smiling. 

“Hey, stranger,” Mike says because he feels odd. 

“How ya doin, Mikey,” Scott says back, still smiling. It’s dark outside now. 

“Come to bed. C’mon.”

“Anything for you, dearest,” Scott coos, and Mike punches his thigh. 

“Shut up. Go to sleep,” he mumbles. 

Mike drifts off with Scott rubbing circles into the small of his back. 

+

Bob is in love with Scott. That much is obvious. 

“I don’t care,” Scott says coolly. Mike envies him for a short moment. 

“I thought you loved him,” he says, because sometimes he can’t help being a passive aggressive fuckwad. 

“I love him like I would love my father, were he a father to me at all.”

Mike just nods, because if he says anything else Scott will launch into a speech about sons and fathers and expectations, and Mike can’t seem to care. He wonders if Scott realizes how lucky he is to know where his parents are, and who they are. Even if they don’t love him, at least they have the decency to tell him. 

+

Mike does not fall in love with Scott because Scott will not love him back. 

Scott touches his face in passing and holds his hand under the table and sleeps in the same bed. Scott calls him baby and combs through his hair while he sleeps. Scott takes care of him even when no one is looking. 

Mike does not fall in love with Scott because Scott will not let himself love him back. 

+

Mike goes on a date with a man who asks him to do nothing other than hold his hand while they watch a movie. He kisses the man’s cheek when it’s over and leaves with two hundred dollars in his pocket. 

He thinks that the man and him would have a lot to talk about. 

+

One day, it’s a year since he and Scott met. A lot has happened but not a lot has changed. Mike has an episode at a bakery while on a date and he wakes up next to Scott on a park bench. 

“How do you live like this?” Scott asks. There are a lot of things he could be referring to. Mike shakes his head. 

“I don’t know.”

Scott rolls his eyes, and Mike looks up at the sky, squinting. Their ankles are pressed together and he is cold. 

He does not fall asleep. They get up and they leave and Mike has never been more tired. 

A year with Scott Favor. Un-fucking-believable.

+

“First rule of hustling,” Mike hears Scott telling some girls he hasn’t seen around before, “Never fall in love.” 

He grins an evil grin like a villain in an old movie, and the girls laugh pretty little laughs, and Mike feels like yanking his teeth out.

+

One client pays him in coke, which he shoves into his jacket pocket and keeps his hand around the whole way home. 

He holds out the bag to Scott like precious treasure, and Scott nods in appreciation. 

He says, “Nice,” but then he thinks for a moment and says, “You need money, though. We’re out of food.”

“I’ll have some by tomorrow,” Mike says, already divvying up the blow into four neat little lines on the old dresser. 

“You need to eat,” Scott says softly. 

“It’s not like I can go exchange it,” Mike snaps. 

Scott doesn’t say anything. He walks over to Mike and wraps his arms around his waist so they’re pressed chest to back. He presses his cheek against the back of Mike’s neck and stays there, perfectly still, just for a moment, before stepping back and letting go and walking out the door. 

When Scott comes back into the room it’s four in the morning and Mike is awake, and the coke is gone, and Scott is holding a plastic bag filled with bread and peanut butter and granola bars. Mike’s face is puffy from crying but Scott doesn’t say anything. 

He sets the bag down and sits on the bed and gathers Mike into his arms. 

The hotel is quiet, and the sky is just beginning to lighten, and Mike thinks that maybe if he waits long enough, Scott could fall in love with him. He thinks that if he waits long enough, he will fall in love with Scott. 

+

“Where’s your boyfriend?” Gary asks, sliding into the booth across from Mike. 

“Scott isn’t my boyfriend,” Mike says, automatic and hollow. 

“Who said I was talking about Scott?” Gary says, smiling. _Gotcha._

Mike kicks his shin under the table, hard. He makes a face. 

Scott isn’t his boyfriend. He sighs, lights a cigarette. The thought has never hurt more. 

+

He’s staring into a puddle of water. His reflection is warped, twisted, rippled. He doesn’t recognize himself. 

He thinks, _I am in love with Scott Favor,_ and then shouts “Fuck!” into the empty street. 

Somewhere, a dog barks. 

+

Scott has never kissed him. 

He thinks about what it would be like often. 

+

There is a woman with curly black hair and bright blue eyeshadow. Her house smells like pine and she tells him to go slow, please. 

There is a man with nervous hands and breathy giggles. He is no older than Mike, and his room is decorated with band posters. He cries and cries and cries and Mike kisses him sweetly before leaving. 

There is a couple who gives him $500 and then asks him to leave halfway through. They do not ask for the money back. 

There are people and dates and money and, sometimes, coke, but there is always Scott at the end of the day. Their coveted space in Jane’s hotel. Their shared body heat in their shared bed. It is more valuable than an inheritance and more fragile than anything Mike has ever held. 

He tries his best to protect it. He says all the right things at the right times except when he doesn’t, but it never breaks. It never tears and it only, barely, falters under the weight of Scott’s inevitable twenty-first birthday. 

Mike doesn’t think he’ll be left behind. He is aware of the possibility, just as he’s aware of the warm presence of Scott drumming a pattern into his shoulder blade. 

He does not dwell on the what if. He can’t afford to. 

+

He practices telling Scott he loves him in the mirror. He practices telling him on the way to the store, on his street corner, in bed when Scott is off on dates or running around the city. 

He says it a thousand different ways, a thousand different times. He never says it to Scott. 

He just can’t afford to. 

+

Mike blinks and it’s two years since Scott walked up to him like he owned the place. He blinks, and he’s in love and it hurts and he’s so fucking _tired_ all the time. 

A year feels a lot shorter when you’re asleep for most of it. 

He has an episode right as Scott tries to get into an argument about drug use or future plans or something asinine and useless and wholly unproductive. When he jerks awake the room is empty, cold. He rolls over and shuts his eyes. But sleep does not come, and neither does Scott, so he is alone and awake but most importantly, he is in love. And it hurts. 

+

He tries to hold Scott at arms length. Scott never gets the memo. 

Every single one of his bones aches. One day Scott says “I could just kiss you, Mikey,” after they successfully lift six packs of smokes from a corner store, and Mike wants to scream _then do it!_

He doesn’t. The sun is shining down and his legs feel like jelly and he doesn’t, because he’s scared of being pushed away. He’s scared of watching Scott slip through his fingers like he slips into sleep, so easy it’s like he was made for it. 

He’s scared Scott was made to leave him. To teach him a lesson he already knows. 

So he doesn’t. He smacks his lips against Scott’s cheek instead, and Scott scrunches his nose up at the slick trail of spit he leaves, and they laugh, and it’s almost as good as anything else Scott could give him. 

Almost. 

+

Mike sighs. The park is quiet and empty. His cigarette is slowly burning where it dangles from his fingers. 

The sun is honey golden and he burrows further into his jacket. He sits and waits for Scott, or maybe for the world to end. 

Perhaps those could be considered the same thing. 

He thinks of nuclear apocalypse and grins. 

+

Bob Pigeon comes and goes and the hotel is empty when he is gone. The roofs they share are cold and stiff but what matters is that they’re together. 

Scott laments Bob every time he leaves, and celebrates his return like he had no idea it was coming. 

What matters is that they’re together, and so Mike averts his eyes and turns his head and only feels a little bit guilty for not saving Scott from a man who would throw him away if offered a large enough sum. 

After all, has Scott not done the same?

+

Mike gets a cold so Scott feeds him soup. Mike falls asleep so Scott carries him to safety. Mike does too much blow so Scott gives him shoplifted Gatorade and sticks his fingers down his throat. 

Mike needs to be taken care of so Scott takes care of him. It only sometimes feels like an act. 

+

Idaho is vast and empty and terrifying. There’s a hundred different people to spit in your face, and a thousand more to rub it in. 

Idaho is where Mike hails from, and it is the place he is the most familiar with. He imagines erasing it from every map in existence more often than he’d care to admit. 

Mike is tired all the way to the pit of his stomach, to the hollow of his bones. Fatigue pumps through him the same way his blood does. There is so much he does not speak of, he can feel himself suffocating when it is quiet enough. 

Scott is just another one of these things. One of the things that will live in Mike’s throat and stay there until he, or it, or both, dies. 

+

Mike thinks about kissing Scott and Mike thinks about running away from it all and Mike thinks about lying down to sleep and never waking up. All are equally appealing but he can’t make up his mind 

+

Walt becomes a regular because Mike has nothing better to do. He always shorts him and blow isn’t as cheap as it used to be. Walt thinks he has a dad, which is good enough for him. 

“Thanks!” he says one morning, before shoving the bill into his pocket and skipping down the steps. Ten whole dollars. Nice. 

+

The rich woman is nice and Hans is creepy and Scott is, of course, there to save him. 

Scott tells him that he’s on his side, and Mike believes him, because it’s all he can afford to do. 

+

Bob is funny and Bob is evil and Bob still thinks Scott is his. Mike hates him and envies him in equal measure.

They move back into their sacred space on the third floor. Scott traces the muscles in Mike’s forearm while he dozes and it becomes more routine than not, to fall asleep next to each other instead of tiptoeing into the room at various hours of the night. Mike especially likes when he wakes up before Scott, and he can imagine that they are different people, and that he is allowed to love Scott, and that the urge to kiss his sleeping face is more romantic than creepy. He imagines the dry brush of his lips against Scott’s cheekbones and feels heat pool in his chest. 

+

He laughs as Scott dramatically thrusts his hips and moans breathy and high. He tries not to laugh as he swats Scott’s hand away, though he isn’t quite sure why he’s doing it. He turns and hides his laugh in the pillow when Scott shoos away the man in the suit. 

Everything is unbelievably funny. Scott kisses his forehead, the tip of his nose. He laughs. He laughs as Scott gets dressed and he laughs when he walks out of the room saying “You are one funny guy, Mikey.”

Everything is so fucking funny. 

+

They make their way to Idaho, which sounds like the worst dream Mike has ever had. Scott doesn’t belong in Idaho. Scott belongs in Portland, where everyone is hiding something, where the cracks and chips are all behind plaster. Maybe everyone in Idaho is hiding something, too. 

The thought drives Mike mad, so he tells Scott he loves him under the stars because it seems romantic enough, and it hurts so much worse than if he had never said anything at all. Scott does not kiss him, or tell him he loves him back, but he does let Mike fall asleep in his arms like they’re back in the hotel, which is maybe something Mike can work with. 

+

Scott does not ask him about his conversation with Dick. In fact, he says nothing at all about the visit. He acts like it never happened, which for all intents and purposes works out just fine. He doesn’t want to talk about it. 

It finds its own spot in his throat among everything else. 

+

Hans gives them just under $400 for the fuck and the bike, and before he knows it, they’re Italy bound. He’s out like a light on the plane. Scott only sort of looks disgusted when he realizes Mike had been drooling on his arm the whole time. 

+

Carmella is beautiful, and Mike hates her, except that he doesn’t, which makes everything so much worse. 

His mother isn’t here, she might be dead, but Scott can’t seem to care about anything other than getting his dick wet, so Mike drinks all of her wine and smokes all of her cigarettes and tries to seethe as loud as he can. 

He is not used to being ignored by Scott. It turns him into a pathetic asshole with gnashing teeth and angry words. He hates it. He hates himself, and he hates Scott, and he hates the entire fucking country of Italy and, the more he thinks about it, the entire fucking world and everything in it. 

He listens to Scott fuck Carmella through the wall and for once, sleep does not come. He has never felt so angry all at once. 

+

Scott leaves Mike in Italy because his leaving was inevitable, Mike figures. Scott leaves

Mike in Italy because all anyone ever does is leave him. Scott leaves Mike in Italy because maybe he isn’t worth sticking around for. 

He falls asleep on the plane to avoid crying in front of strangers. It is easy to do something instead of crying. It is easy to fall asleep. It is easy to miss Scott. He's had plenty of practice.

When he opens his eyes he is back in Portland, sans Scott, and he feels pleasantly empty. 

+

Bob Pigeon dies. Mike reasons that this might as well happen. Randy says, “Scott Favor broke his heart,” and Mike thinks, _get in line._

The funeral is nothing more or less than Bob Pigeon’s funeral, which is to say it feels like everyone is pretending to be something they are not. 

When he catches Scott’s eye across the cemetery green, it feels like he is looking at someone he’s never met. He can’t find it in him to feel bad that Scott’s father has died, but he can’t imagine Scott is too torn up either. 

In another life Scott is beside him at Bob’s funeral, or maybe in another life Bob never dies. Maybe in another life they never meet Bob and Scott is Mike’s and Mike’s alone. 

He does not dwell on the what if. 

+

He was foolish to think that Scott would be there always. But his road with a face, the unwavering constant that is Idaho, he knows that will always be there for him lest someone drops a bomb on the whole place. 

He lays down to sleep, or maybe to die, he’s not feeling very picky. If a car does not swerve out of the way, well, he can cross that bridge when he comes to it. 

+

Scott apologizes more than once. Actually, he apologizes about three hundred times, throughout the course of a long winded ramble about falling in love with the wrong person, or something. Mike isn’t really listening. He woke up in a mystery car without shoes or his bag, and with Scott fucking Favor sitting in the driver’s seat, anxiously looking back at him every two seconds. 

When he noticed that Mike was awake, he had said “Oh, Mikey,” and Mike had closed his eyes again. He had to be dreaming. Scott had never looked at him quite like _that._

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Scott says again, nervously. 

“Scott,” Mike sighs. “I’m tired.”

“Go to sleep, then, Mikey. I’ll wake you up when they get there.”

Mike doesn’t bother to find out where that is. 

+

They’re in a dinky little motel, and there’s sitcoms playing on the television, and the room is cold, so Mike burrows himself further into the bed. 

“Can we talk?” Scott says. 

“Go ahead,” Mike mumbles. 

Scott scowls before sitting hesitantly on the edge of the bed. He looks away, at the wall, at the ugly wallpaper with little leaves and trees on it. 

“I know I fucked up. I know _I’m_ fucked up. But, I think, you know, I - I could. If you let me.”

Mike feels his stomach rolling. This can’t be happening. This _isn’t_ happening. He’ll wake up in a minute on his road, and he’ll be alone, but at least nothing will be as confusing as what’s happening right now. He’ll be alone, but at least he’ll know who Scott is and the type of person he’s become. 

“I’m not asking you to trust me,” he continues. 

Mike says, “Good,” and Scott laughs a quiet, broken sound of relief, so Mike spares him a glance. 

“I’ll take you to Dick’s, if you want. I’ll take you wherever you wanna go, Mikey.”

Mike thinks about it. He never really wanted to go anywhere that Scott wasn’t, and now, he’s not too sure that’s changed. He looks Scott in the eye, and he realizes that he still loves him. Because how could he stop loving Scott? It seems impossible, which makes him feel a little sick, but really it just makes him feel safe. 

He tugs on Scott’s sleeve until he gets the memo. They lay their heads on the same pillow, only an inch or so apart, and Mike doesn’t want to have a fit so he closes his eyes and says, “Let’s go home. I wanna go home.”

He leans forward blindly and kisses Scott. He decides to let him decide where home is. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i did take a few creative liberties please don’t yell at me
> 
> anyways this feels like i cut out my heart and am now positing it to ao3 so. enjoy!
> 
> if you would like to come yell at me but in a good way, i’m @bloodyknucklez on tumblr. 
> 
> (title from night shift by lucy dacus)


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